British Films Directory

Film Detail

One Thick Second

Synopsis

A film about identity crisis in Britain in the late 1990s, One Thick Second opens with a man, Scott (Jon Webb), being thrown through a glass window. Cut and bruised, he refuses to accept help from those he encounters as he goes on the run, eventually winding up in Cornwall, where he meets Lena, to whom he reveals the reasons for his escape.

The film is the debut for director Will Pugh and producer Chloe Wyatt, who both have experience in shorts and promos. Pugh wrote the screenplay in 1997, to fill the gap between the two types of film Britain makes --- Nil By Mouth on one hand and Notting Hill on the other. It attempts, he says, to "portray life as seen by a man who inhabits the cultural no-man's-land familiar to a large proportion of Britain's youth". In true guerrilla fashion, Pugh and Wyatt begged, borrowed but stopped short of stealing to raise the £12,000 budget and equipment they needed to make their film (and received an Arts 4 Everyone Express National Lottery grant).

The film was completed in December last year and enjoyed three successful screenings at Bristol's new arts cinema The Cube. While Pugh is busy promoting the film on the festival circuit, including Montreal and Split, he has nailed down a broadcast sale with UK digital channel SkyNet.

Meanwhile, the shooting experience taught Pugh and Wyatt several lessons, which they have posted on their website at onethicksecond.cjb.net. They advise new directors not to shoot in 24 frames per second, to plan post-production before shooting begins and to employ a good stills photographer. They also exhort other guerrilla film-makers to take the "vow of no-budget", cheekily subtitled Dogme 99, which includes avoiding "vapid hipness, guns, gangsters, drug deals and other bullshit, unless real and experienced first-hand by the producer/director". The vow also forbids giving up once production has begun.